Roy Jenkins
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Callaghan was the clear favourite, despite his age and undistinguished record in all three of the great offices of state. Since defying Wilson over In Place of Strife he had rebuilt a formidable reputation as a reassuring heavyweight with a sure feel for party and public opinion. Three days after Wilson’s announcement, Labour Weekly quoted odds of 2:1 on Callaghan, with Jenkins second on 5:1 followed by Crosland on 12:1 and Foot and Benn on 14:1 (Healey had not yet declared). All Labour leadership elections in those days came down to the leading candidate of the right against the candidate of the left, with the former always likely to win unless he carried too much personal baggage – like George Brown in 1963, which had let Wilson sneak through. This time Foot would be the champion of the left and would probably top the first ballot. To have a chance of winning Jenkins therefore had to get more votes than Callaghan on the first ballot, after which he should easily beat Foot on the second. Five years earlier he had commanded 140 votes for deputy leader. But the parliamentary party had changed since then, with two new intakes in 1974 replacing a lot of older Members who had known him since 1950: the memory of how he had dominated the House in 1966–70 was a dwindling asset. There were too many younger Labour Members whom he had never taken the trouble to get to know. One MP of moderate views was reported to have said that he would vote for Jenkins if he once said ‘Good evening’ to him in the division lobby; but he didn’t, so he didn’t.54 More seriously there was real doubt as to whether he could unite the party in the country. Not only on Europe, but on the trade unions, industrial policy and the economy he had set his face firmly against the majority of party activists, while his libertarian views on hanging, homosexuality and immigration were out of step with the bulk of Labour voters.
In The Times his faithful cheerleader Bernard Levin argued that Jenkins would bring back to Labour many former supporters who had abandoned it since 1970 and mop up the Liberal vote: the left called him divisive, but he would unite the country as no other potential Prime Minister could, while actually standing well to the left of Callaghan on most issues.55 But Establishment endorsement of this sort was counterproductive: in the same paper the cartoonist Mark Boxer drew one willowy toff saying to another: ‘If you really want Roy to win, what about not announcing your support?’56 ‘No amount of encomiums from Bernard Levin,’ Phillip Whitehead wrote in the New Statesman, ‘are worth the vote of a single ward party.’ One MP who failed to vote for Jenkins told Whitehead sadly: ‘I could have done it if there had been a glimmer of support for him in the constituency.’57 And a famous story went the rounds alleging that when one of Jenkins’ supporters tried canvassing a group of miners’ MPs in the tea-room he was met with a kindly brush-off: ‘Nay, lad, we’re all Labour here.’58 The fact was that Jenkins simply did not look or sound like a Labour leader.fn6
He did not canvass, realising that it would have looked false if he had suddenly appeared in the bars and tea-room pressing the flesh; but he made himself available in his room for interviews with wavering supporters. Several whose votes he could have counted on a few years earlier told him frankly that they no longer believed that he could lead the party: notable defectors included Leo Abse, Roy Hattersley and Edmund Dell. At least two who later joined the SDP, Edward Lyons and Colin Phipps, also failed to vote for Jenkins in 1976. He still had some committed supporters outside the ranks of the core Jenkinsites – Shirley Williams, Shirley Summerskill, Betty Boothroyd, Willie Hamilton and his old Balliol friend David Ginsburg. But his Birmingham colleague Denis Howell voted for him only after much heart-searching; and even a close ally like Harold Lever told Donoughue that he supported him because ‘in the end he is a Jenkins man’, despite having frequently felt snubbed by him.60 Despite this lack of enthusiasm he fought, in his own way, a good campaign. A lot of people thought he wiped the floor with Healey and Foot on Panorama – Callaghan preserved his position as front-runner by declining to appear, while Crosland, to his fury, was not invitedfn7 – insisting that he could work with the unions and unite the party. Afterwards he told Ronnie McIntosh that he still expected Callaghan to win, but he ‘clearly has some hope that he may pull it off, and admitted that he felt exhilarated by the whole thing’.62 There is nothing like an election for stimulating unreal hopes.
He had a lot of letters from old friends wishing him luck. His one-time girlfriend Barley Alison desperately hoped that he would win but, failing that, hoped that he would become Foreign Secretary and succeed to the leadership in a couple of years, ‘so you can trounce Mrs T’.63 His boyhood playmate from Abersychan, Derek Powell, feared that Callaghan would win, which he thought would be a disaster, and told Roy that he should never have resigned as deputy leader.64 This was plainly true, but unhelpful.
As the first ballot approached, some of his team were still optimistic that he could poll well enough to have a chance of winning on the second or third. John Roper actually put him in second place with 84 votes to Foot’s 90 and Callaghan’s 79, with Healey, Benn and Crosland sharing 57 between them. ‘I stick my neck out,’ Matthew Oakeshott wrote, ‘and say you will get 80 votes tomorrow. That already would represent a substantial chance of victory.’ Bill Rodgers was a little more realistic, but still substantially overstated: ‘My best guess is that you will get 68 votes. But there is a good prospect that this will rise to about 75.’ These estimates were based on a printed list of all 318 Labour MPs marked up in four classes, A, B, C or D: certain, possible, unlikely and definitely hostile. This gave just 44 As and 82 Bs. Roper, Oakeshott and Rodgers all misjudged the number of Bs Jenkins would actually get. Jenkins’ own prediction, written down the evening before the ballot, was the most accurate: Foot 90, Callaghan 85, Jenkins 62, Healey 38, Benn 25, Crosland 12.65 He was spot-on with Foot, one off with Callaghan, but still overestimated his own vote by six, Healey’s by eight, and underestimated Benn by twelve and Crosland by five. The actual result, declared the following afternoon, was Foot 90, Callaghan 84, Jenkins 56, Benn 37, Healey 30, Crosland 17.
This outcome – ‘about ten votes less than I had realistically hoped for’ – he characteristically described as ‘a considerable, but not a shattering disappointment to me’.66 Analysis in the New Statesman suggested that he won the votes of only just over half the 100-odd committed pro-Marketeers, and just seven votes from the other 227 who were lukewarm or hostile to Europe. Both Foot and Healey won more of the ‘middle’ than he did; Foot attracted wider support beyond his left-wing core than Jenkins did beyond the right; while eleven of Crosland’s seventeen votes came from the left.67 In retrospect he was inclined to regret that another dozen votes taken from Callaghan, plus a handful more from Healey and Crosland, would have given him the chance to beat Foot on the second ballot and win the premiership. Perhaps he should have worked a little harder to win back the doubters? But in reality these figures show that his support was just too narrow and he could never have commanded the party.
That afternoon Rodgers had written him ‘a long, powerfully argued letter’ considering what he should do if he did not win. If he was more than about ten votes behind Callaghan, Rodgers reckoned, he probably would not be able to close the gap. If Healey and Crosland won forty-five between them – nearly right – they would have to switch two-to-one for Jenkins on the second ballot, and ‘I just don’t believe it, given the instinct to back the winner’. More likely, his vote might actually fall, and the gap between him and Callaghan widen, thus losing the benefit of having run him close on the first ballot. Therefore, Rodgers advised, it would be better to bank his winnings and withdraw at once. ‘My strong sense is that, if on the most hard-headed analysis you can’t win, you should make a virtue of necessity with a quick decision to withdraw.’68
Jenkins agreed. He thought the country needed a new Prime Minister quickly, not a protracted struggle stretching over three or four rounds. Of his supporters who gathered in his room after the result, only three disagreed. One – who arrived late as usual – was Shirley Williams. She wanted Jenkins to negotiate a
deal with Callaghan: a promise of the Foreign Office in return for his withdrawal. But Jenkins rejected both this and any sort of deal with Healey. He lost no time in issuing a statement to the press that he was stepping aside, and Dickson Mabon was dispatched to break the news to the Callaghan camp, who were mightily relieved. Jenkins then went off to the monthly dinner of the Other Club with Nicko Henderson, ‘where not unnaturally in all the circumstances we consumed a good deal of alcohol’.69
Barbara Castle was ‘staggered’ by his decision to withdraw. ‘This further display of political daintiness proves conclusively what I have always known: that Jenkins will never lead the Labour Party. I bet Denis stays in the ring, despite his derisory thirty votes. But then, he’s a pugilist, not a patrician.’70 In her memoirs she added that David Owen – her junior minister at the Department of Health – ‘did not attempt to hide his disgust from me’.71 Healey did stay in, but picked up only eight more votes on the second ballot, on which Callaghan narrowly took the lead (Callaghan 141, Foot 133, Healey 38) before winning convincingly on the third (Callaghan 176, Foot 137). At the party meeting to announce the result on 5 April, Jenkins made what Tony Benn called ‘a most ponderous, rather Victorian speech’ marking the change of leadership:
He looked shattered – this contest has been as much of a death for him as Herbert Morrison’s execution at the hands of Hugh Gaitskell in 1955. I think Roy does now realise he can’t ever be Leader of the Labour Party.72
Much of his speech was a surprisingly warm tribute to the departing Prime Minister. Wilson was touched by it, and asked for a copy. Jenkins obliged, with a covering letter generously burying the hatchet after their often fraught relationship since 1964:
I am sorry we had a number of differences – some of them a bit rough – over the past five years. They do not in any way blot out for me the recollection of close earlier co-operation . . . In retrospect I think I never allowed enough for your ability and determination to achieve medium and long-term aims at the expense of short-term sacrifices of esteem.
In his original draft Jenkins had added an apology ‘for my occasional (or perhaps more frequent) shortsightedness’. But this was perhaps going a bit too far and he deleted it.73
Callaghan’s succession marked the end of Jenkins’ dwindling hope of the premiership. He now had to decide whether to stay in British politics or take up the offer to go to Brussels. His answer depended on what inducement Callaghan offered him. He rather assumed – as did most of the press – that he was the obvious candidate to fill Callaghan’s place at the Foreign Office. This was the one senior department of state he had not occupied, for which he felt well qualified and where he could see an important role for himself, making the most of Britain’s now-confirmed membership of Europe. Callaghan, however, had other ideas. He initially wanted Healey as his Foreign Secretary – the job for which Healey too had been preparing all his life, for which he was far better equipped than for the Treasury. But Healey could not leave the Treasury for the present (he was about to introduce his third budget) and generously told Callaghan he ‘must offer the FCO to Roy’.74 Meanwhile Foot warned that the party would not stand Jenkins as Foreign Secretary: the anti-Marketeers might have lost the referendum, but they would not accept an ardent pro-Marketeer conducting a love-in with Europe. Foot wanted Peter Shore to have the job. When Jenkins saw Callaghan on the morning of 6 April, therefore, he was disappointed to be offered not the job he coveted, but only the possibility of the Treasury in six months’ time when Healey would be free to move to the Foreign Office. In the meantime he would presumably stay at the Home Office:
I was dismayed by this. The thought of going back to the Treasury, particularly in a much weaker Cabinet position than had been the case in 1966/70 and trying to fight through sensible policies with Foot and Jones to deal with struck me as appalling.fn8 I therefore immediately said that I thought I would have to pursue policies so rigorous that they would break the Government.75
Callaghan disagreed and said he believed Jenkins could do it; but they parted inconclusively. Jenkins lunched with his inner circle of advisers – Jennifer, John Harris, Hayden Phillips, Anthony Lester and Matthew Oakeshott – all of whom more or less endorsed his reluctance to go back to the Treasury (Lester and Oakeshott less certainly than the others), especially as it was only a promise for the future. By the time he saw Callaghan again the next day he had resolved to take the Foreign Office or nothing. He was at least as well qualified as Healey. Was the Prime Minister really saying that a pro-European could not be Foreign Secretary? If so, he would rather go to Brussels. Callaghan was regretful but unbudging. The next day he rubbed vinegar in the wound by appointing Tony Crosland Foreign Secretary.
This was the latest (and, as it turned out, the last) twist in the game of leapfrog that Jenkins and Crosland had been playing ever since Oxford: Tony’s revenge for Roy beating him to the Treasury in 1967. It had never occurred to Jenkins that Crosland – who had never shown the least interest in foreign affairs – might be a rival for the Foreign Office, and he confessed to feeling, as in 1965 when Crosland had accepted Education after he refused it, ‘a twinge of rather discreditable jealousy’. ‘My relations with Crosland have of course been odd over a number of decades,’ he wrote in his memoir notes – before substituting ‘equivocal’ for ‘odd’. As in 1965, he took some malicious pleasure in the fact that Crosland was widely considered a poor appointment, ‘on the ground that he knew remarkably little about foreign affairs’.76 On the other hand Crosland had been the better-qualified economist when he missed out in 1967, so there was rough justice there. Lack of knowledge did not stop Crosland being ‘exultant’ at getting his own back.77 For his part, Jenkins did not believe that Foot had vetoed him, but rather that Callaghan was jealous of his greater success at both the Home Office and the Treasury in 1965–70. ‘I think he was determined that this pattern should not repeat itself a third time,’ he wrote, ‘and had no desire to go around Europe or the world or to deal with foreign affairs with me as a Foreign Secretary with a fairly widespread world reputation and perhaps having my attitude contrasted with his rather ungracious insularity.’78 The complacency of this consolation does not mean that it was an inaccurate analysis. Callaghan was much more comfortable with a Foreign Secretary who shared his own weary scepticism towards Europe. The appointment was also Crosland’s reward for having backed Callaghan for the leadership as far back as 1963. There is sometimes gratitude in politics.
Garland, Daily Telegraph, 9.4.76 (British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent)
Jenkins really did not want to go to Brussels if he could have stayed. His first instinctive recoil from Wilson’s suggestion was genuine. But the only two British jobs he really wanted had been denied him and he did not wish to stay in the Cabinet as a lame duck. He was afraid that his poor showing in the leadership election would have damaged his authority. He now felt that he might have held a stronger bargaining hand if he had not withdrawn from the leadership contest so quickly. In other circumstances, he told Lester, he might have been interested in taking on devolution and other constitutional reforms, ‘but not if his authority is gone’.79 All sorts of people – friends, journalists and others – urged him not to go. ‘For heaven’s sake stay in politics and don’t desert us for Europe,’ Ann Fleming begged him. ‘You will be needed here more than you ever were.’80, fn9 More seriously David Watt of the Financial Times, with whom he lunched (at the Ritz) on 30 March, understood his wish to get out, but told him that Brussels was not the job for him at this time: there was still a lot for him to do at home and he might yet succeed Callaghan.81 Janet Morgan, then a young Oxford academic who was editing the Crossman diaries, wrote flatteringly:
The more I plod through the Crossman diaries . . . the more clear it becomes that while Wilson & Callaghan & Castle & Foot and all the rest of them are a past generation of politicians, you are not. You are forward-looking and looked to, in a way that is not true of much of the 1964–70 and 1974–76
front bench, and you are, though it may not seem like it now, still on the upward rise of the curve. Please don’t go.82
Some of his most trusted supporters, by contrast, were telling him more or less delicately that he was finished. Even before the final result of the leadership election, when he was still hoping to get the Foreign Office, David and Debbie Owen had come to East Hendred for tennis and dinner and over the course of the evening Owen rather encouraged him to go to Brussels. It was of course his decision to stay or go, but either way he must realise that his campaign for the leadership was over: ‘I mustn’t expect to run a group as I had done in the past.’ Owen talked almost exclusively of his own prospects and ambitions. ‘His attitude struck both Jennifer and me as being a little cold and self-interested.’83 In the New Statesman Phillip Whitehead likened Jenkins’ anticipated departure to the death of Peel in 1846 which allowed the Peelites – above all Gladstone – to move on to make their own careers.84 Historical parallels always resonated with Jenkins and he duly noted this one. The next day Bill and Sylvia Rodgers came to lunch: Rodgers was friendlier than Owen, but his advice was much the same. Just as he had done over the deputy leadership, he thought Jenkins must follow his own instinct. There was no point staying in the government if his heart was not in it. ‘There is no point acting against nature’: